His Ardor: A Meitantei Holmes fanfic Part 1
by AmberPalette
Summary: The complete prologue: setting up a case in which he must work together with his worst foe, Holmes becomes involved in romantic webs with Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler, and Professor Moriarty. Looks like even a genius finds love hard to decipher!


His Ardor:

A Sherlock Hound/Meitantei Holmes Fanfiction

By Amber C.S. ("ProfessorA")

**Author's note: Fair warning to you angst-pods, action lovers, and cold-hearted Ebenezer Scrooges floating out there on the net: I am infamous on the message boards for writing what is christened "warm fuzzy" fanfiction and "psychological/character driven" fanfiction.  Meaning, shortly, that I focus on the inner psyche of the key characters, their defining relationships with each other as they are now and as they might evolve, and play around with what might occur should redemption and renewal come to the emotion al landscape of their lives.  Meaning, further, I try to give the good guys the happiness they deserve, and I try to reform the bad guys into good guys, even if it seems utterly implausible that it would happen in the actual source canon. I have my share of gore and grit in these stories, but the endings are always on a range of bittersweet to happy and never tragic. And I am proud of it.  ****J**** But please note—if you seek extreme adherence to the Doyle canon here, you will only (in this _rare _case) find me experimenting with its more loosely adapted offspring, the Hayao Miyazaki animated series "Sherlock Hound."  This means that you, reader, should expect to see Holmes/Hound a bit milder, Watson a bit more bumbling, Mrs. Hudson younger, and Moriarty a _whole lot_ less evil.  **

**_This work is a hodgepodge of various canonical and alternate universe sources:_****  The Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (most specifically "The Sign of Four," "A Study In Scarlet," "A Scandal In Bohemia," and "The Final Problem"), the Basil Rathbone film "Terror By Night," the Hayao Miyazaki television series "Sherlock Hound," the Hallmark/Artisan Entertainment Sherlock Holmes miniseries, and especially the Steven Spielberg film "Young Sherlock Holmes."**

**All characters aside the historically infamous figure "Jack the Ripper" and my fancharacter "Katherine Farrell" (who is copyrighted to ME) are copyright Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; in the case of Dr. Waxflatter and Elizabeth Hardy, Steven Spielberg; or, in the case of Todd and Smiley, Hayao Miyazaki.  I do NOT own any of them.  I am not a genius like the aforementioned gentlemen who have created them—I am still learning.  ****J**

**OH, p.s. I have changed Mrs. Hudson's age from 19 to 24 because damn it, despite its legitimacy in Victorian culture, it just makes me squirm to think Hound (late 20's), Watson (early 30's), and Moriarty (37) are in love with a girl a year younger than me and that she has already been married once (*gag*).  Rather, she was 19 when her husband died and Holmes met her. Thanks for understanding.  ^_^**

**~*~**

_ "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."— _the Tempest, _by William Shakespeare_

~*~

_"To Sherlock Holmes, she is always _the _woman . . . in his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.  It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler.  All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind . . . and yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory."—_Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from _A Scandal in Bohemia_

_"  'There are too many memories here, Watson.'_

_'Holmes, you have your whole life ahead of you.'_

_'Yes. And I will live it alone.' " –_Steven Spielberg's _Young Sherlock Holmes_

~*~

I had become certain, upon my years scurrying across the countryside in pursuit of adventure alongside my brilliant, eccentric companion Sherlock Holmes, that there was only one woman he had ever loved.  With his boyhood lover's heroic death, and with her final repose beneath London soil, Holmes's capacity for tenderness towards the female sex had waned forever. 

Or so I thought.  Fool that I am, often forgetting my companion's cardinal rule:  _Never assume anything, but observe everything_.  My ability for awe and my tendency to be horrifically shocked owe all their allegiance to my hasty assumptions and my dismissal of small details.  This would perhaps explain my consternation during the entire case that I will now chronicle.   It is perhaps the most lurid and yet the most wondrous of them all, and the outcome has permanently changed the landscape of our two lives. 

For even Hound did not see that his cardinal rule applied, also, to the infinitely unpredictable mosaic of a living soul.   

_Any _living soul. 

~*~

**_Prologue: January 1903, one year preceding the events as chromicled by John H. Watson, M.D., late of Her Majesty's Army_**_._

I can remember the hollowness in his voice as clearly as if it were yesterday, while he recited what he came to deem _The_ Letter.  For yet another time in the week following our psychological chess game with the actress and opera star Irene Adler—an adventure in royal entanglements that I came to title "A Scandal in Bohemia"—my old friend and flat mate, the restless genius known as Sherlock Holmes, tossed himself into a chair, his crisp gray eyes teeming with his cognitions, flung his long legs up on a footstool, and recited the greeting written by the only living creature in all his career who had bested him.  A woman.  No: _The_ Woman.

" ' I had been warned of you months ago,' " he grunted the letter's contents out the side of his mouth, for he was puffing smoke, as usual, out his steadfast pipe, " 'I had been told that if the King employed an agent, it would certainly be you.  And your address had been given to me.  Yet, with all this, you made me reveal what you wanted to know . . . But, you know, I have been trained as an actress, myself.  Male costume is nothing new to me.  I often take advantage of the freedom which it gives . . . I put on my walking clothes, as I call them.  Well, I followed you to your door, and so made sure that I was really an object of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sherlock Holmes.  Then I, rather imprudently, wished you goodnight, and started for the Temple to see my husband.  We both thought the best resource was flight, when pursued by so formidable an antagonist, so you will find the nest empty when you call tomorrow . . . I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes, very truly yours . . . Irene Norton, nee Adler.' "  My flat mate tossed the perfectly preserved note to the corner of the table, amidst our tea and crumbles of biscuits and crumpled napkins, produced the photograph that accompanied it, and sighed from the depths of his chest.  He turned the thing over and over in his long, thin fingers, clutching his brow with his free hand.  At last he let it flutter against his breakfast china, face down. "_Damn it all_," I heard him hiss deep under his breath.  "But she _was_ a beautiful soul. An intelligent, enchanting soul.  A woman like all the rest.  Such power, such _power_!  What a pity I didn't know her longer, and now she's lost to Godfrey Norton and America.  Beautiful and cruel, eh, Watson?"

I groaned inwardly, fully accustomed to but increasingly exasperated by my friend's grudging respect and eager mistrust of all belonging to the female gender.  Holmes never trusted women, but he used to jest about the cleverness of the fairer sex, and, while he kept them at an awkwardly careful arm's length, he had a clear fondness for a select number of girls—our young landlady Mrs. Hudson and a street urchin that we had rescued whose name was Polly.  But the jests had grown less frequent after Irene Adler.  Holmes's alienation from even the women he admired grew nearly palpable after Irene Adler—a chilly steel wall to his spirit.  There was indeed something inside The Woman that had bewitched him.  I tried to divert my comrade from the subject of the femme fatale's soul. 

"Now, Holmes, what of Marie Hudson?  I hope you don't find me too presumptuous asking you, but surely you can't tell me a _single fiber_ of _her_ is cruel . . ."

"Yes."

"_Yes_?  You mean you think she is cruel?"

"No.  I mean, yes, as in you _are _being presumptuous to ask me how I feel . . . about Marie Hudson."

My jaw dropped.  I stared at him, stung.  "Oh.  I see."  

"Well, I don't ask you how _you_ feel about her, do I?  It stands to reason that you might _return _the courtesy."  He kicked a stack of papers out of the way scooted the footstool to the side, and turned his violently blushing face away from me.  "Oh, Watson, for heaven's sake, stop _gawking_ at me."

I was tempted to delve deeper into this emerging clue of my ambiguous friend's amorous attractions.  But I also valued my hide, so I held my tongue about it, and detoured my thoughts.  Perhaps I could appeal to the famed detective's insatiable curiosity. "Alright, fair enough, Holmes.  But who do you suppose gave Ms. Adler the address?  And warned her in the first place, eh?"

He cast me a sidelong glare—a dark look intended for someone who was not present in the room.  I knew at once that my attempts to cheer him had backfired dreadfully. "You know who, Watson."

"You mean . . .?"

"Of course. _He_ probably enjoyed telling her.  _He_ always enjoys sticking thorns through my ribs, enjoys trying to deceive and fluster me, and no one is more pervasive an organizer of London's underworld than _him_.  They're two of a kind, I say . . _. nothing_ like me.  Not . . . not at all.  Good riddance." And with that, he stood, stormed to his room, and slammed shut the door behind him.  His room was silent as a crypt all afternoon. 

But that evening, Holmes floated wordlessly from our flat—simply donned his deerstalker and stepped outside, pale and mute as a specter.  I watched him limp down the street, shoulders hunched, hands shoved in pockets, through the London fog.  Then I dashed down the steps to the foyer, a strange anxiety in my heart, and sought some evidence of his destination.  

Pinned to the wall with one of his shooting darts was a hastily scrawled note: 

"_My Dear Watson, _

_Forgive my rudeness when I ask you not follow me.  I have gone to the cemetery to visit Elizabeth Hardy's grave.  You see, old chum, this is one of those things that I have always known I must endure alone.  Love is something I doubt I shall ever, in all my deductive skills, come to understand.  We can thank_ _the entrancing Ms. Adler—doubtless now Mrs. Norton—for that revelation.  I am not sure whether to be injured or grateful because of her. I am not sure whether this is victory or surrender, this stirring of emotions long dead.  But either way, I know that it is uncontestable.  See you in an hour or so. I'll come in alone, hang up my lonely cap and coat, and make some love to the cocaine needle.  As ever and always, right? _

_Yours,_

_Holmes"_

Elizabeth Hardy was the sole woman that Sherlock Holmes had ever loved. She was that singular boyhood lover of which I have spoken.  

Fifteen years ago, she was murdered by his worst enemy.  The killer's pistol, with one bullet loaded, had been aiming for Holmes's heart.  Elizabeth had jumped in the way and been his surrogate victim.

The killer's name was Ehtar, alias Professor James Rathe.   

He would come to rename himself James Moriarty.  

And he would come to warn Irene Adler to steer clear of the persistent genius of Sherlock Holmes.  He would give her the address of 221 B. Baker Street, and brief her on my friend's knack for brilliant disguise.  Moriarty would make sure Holmes stayed a lonely soul.  

Since that moment, since that time in which he watched my friend's lover fall dead without a second of remorse, I firmly believed that Moriarty was a man incapable of love.  At the time, I would have been correct.  

At the time.

Holmes was right about one thing.  Women are powerful forces in this world.  And they know, whether by instinct, or perhaps by something even more mysterious, how to enact change. 

~*~

**_May 1903_**

Professor James Moriarty was unaccustomed to feeling satisfied.  By anything, in any way.  Rather, he derived a nearly masochistic pride from a capacity to endure onslaughts of self-criticism and self-imposed dreams of grandeur, feverishly and relentlessly pursued.  He preferred to season his mind with incalculable volumes on mathematics, philosophy, literature, science, language and history, among other things.  He preferred to glean more and more means of extravagant self-benefit, until no culture known to the world had remained unexplored and unexploited by his wit.  Moriarty preferred always to stay a little hungry, physically and psychologically, in order to maintain a competitive edge with his own standards.  To his knowledge, there was no limit to his achievements; he could do a little better than he had done already.  This was both profoundly nurturant and profoundly damaging to his self-esteem.  

His sole worthy nemesis and former protégé, the private detective Sherlock Holmes, preferred to be quoted in the Strand Magazine referring to the Napoleon of Crime's dreams as "delusions."  

Bah.  Dreams, delusions, only minor technical delineations there.  Particularly saucy, too, coming from the only being in all England who managed consistently to foil Moriarty's criminal plots—the detective who deflated the dirigible of his dreams with his incessant moral integrity.  To put it to dramatic alliteration, at least.  

That meddling pup.

Nevertheless, the Professor decided he would allow that particular insult to fade away without making yet another attempt at killing Holmes.

After all, he had other valid reasons, currently, to be rid of the irritating genius that resided at 221 B. Baker Street.

Namely, the exquisite young woman standing in the criminal's kitchen this very moment, her dusty rose apron stained with meat basting and her lush sun blond hair streaming from a loose bun.  The exquisite young woman humming "Greensleeves" as, smiling to herself like one hiding a delicious secret, she washed his dishes. The exquisite young woman who was his hostage.

_What on earth would I need a wife for?  _Words blurted hours earlier, words he already would gladly swallow.  Because of her.

The hostage was Holmes's widowed 24-year-old landlady, the key device in his plot to publicly ridicule and ruin his arch enemy once and for all.  The creature to whom no kindness was impossible, whose name was Marie Hudson.  And Moriarty, who was used to a morsel of nearly rancid fried fish or a tiny stash of aged lima beans, who had, tonight, consumed half of a very rich kidney pie, a good four glasses of cherry, and innumerable sugared grapes, apple and melon slices, felt satisfied.

Satisfied.  More than that.  Appreciated.  Valued and validated.  Alive and very, very full.  He rested his hands on a typically reed-slim but currently round belly, gauging his balance before standing.  He was a bit tipsy, he judged; the bookshelf lining, with its volumes of Shakespeare and Homer, seemed to be swaying to and fro like a clipper ship.  Oh, well.  What was a little loss of equilibrium to keep a man from standing?  Adjusting his monocle on the bridge of his nose, Moriarty glanced at his two lackeys, the faithful but accident-prone bumblers known as Todd O'Toole and Smiley Marrow.  The equally stuffed lads had succumbed to a deep, liquor-induced slumber.  The former, a stout brown pug who was also a master of uninspired common sense, now peacefully reposed with his head collapsed against his plate; the latter, a gangling Hamilton Hound with ruefully drooped ears, snored loudly up at the rafters of their underground hideout.  Not one to indulge in feelings of affection, Moriarty nevertheless allowed a gentle chuckle, moustache twitching, as he heaved himself from his chair.  His face acquired resolve as he stretched his lanky legs and made for the kitchen—he was on a mission.  He had a captive to thank.  

Mrs. Hudson had taken his filthy bachelor pad, about as wildly chaotic as his own teeming brain, and, in the two hours that he had been absent to implement various types of mischief in London, had rendered it a respectable, immaculate residence.  A residence deserving of a learned scholar—and she had only been in his abode for a matter of hours.  It had been like a homecoming of the deepest poignancy for Professor Moriarty, a man who had worked his way to success in the high society of England against all social odds and had still never been acknowledged for his toils.  At worst harassed for an illegitimate birth and a bloodline not wholly Caucasoid, at best ignored as insignificant—but undaunted. Yet . . . _exhausted_ from all that trying and all that failing, in his heart of hearts. And now, finally, treated as a noteworthy being.  

Only hours ago, hands tied against showing the benefactress of his ego the gratitude she deserved, Moriarty had watched with a sudden and overwhelming sense of self-loathing as Holmes's landlady, doubtless filled to the brim with tales of his diabolical nature (courtesy of the detective), yet served him his favorite meal. . . and smiled at him.   

"This smells like kidney pie," he'd exclaimed, stunned by the coincidence.  The shock of it momentarily blunted his feelings of guilt with hungry glee.

"Well, Smiley told me," Mrs. Hudson explained, with a joy that pierced right through her captor's skin, "that kidney pie is your absolute favorite dish!  I was _so _delighted to discover _precisely_ what meal would give you pleasure!"  Her face was illuminated, bright and jubilant, even in the low-lit parlor.

Something inside Moriarty, something cold, hard, incubating, crumbled then and there.  "My God . . ." And something else was exposed—something that he never knew he had in the first place.  " . . . You mean you prepared this . . . for _me_?" 

Marie Hudson just kept smiling at him.

Christ, that was a huge kidney pie.  It must have taken her hours.  And she'd even made a little gravy rendition of his airplane, added a top hat, and adhered it to the tip of the pie—all for him.  He reached out to rotate the dish—yes, it was there, too, a little "M" for "Moriarty" etched into the back of the pie.  _All for him_.  

Then, God damn it, he withered.  His head sank right down between his arms.

And Professor Moriarty cried.  Oh, yes, not just a sniff—a _deluge_.  Quietly, but bitterly, from his core . . . and, damn it to _hell_, in front of the _hired help_, no less!  He kept his eyes squeezed shut, clenched his fists to suppress the sobs held in his shaking ribcage.  _Blast it_.  If a few whimpers had not broken through his lips, none of his companions would even have realized his distress.  But a noise between a whine and a sigh, a pathetic forlorn sound, escaped him, and immediately, he was sure, they knew.  He went rigid and clutched the tablecloth tighter in his fists.  

Todd asked what was wrong.  Smiley injected a possibility: did he have a stomach ache?  

"_No_, you imbeciles," he had snapped, humiliated, fumbling for an excuse, but at last giving in, blurting, "I'm _touched_, all right?  It's just that . . . this is the first time . . . that anybody . . ." 

"I understand that feeling, Professor," Todd, the smarter of his employees, helped him to finish his confession, in a tone that was uncharacteristically tender; he was quietly communicating his continued respect for his boss. "No one loves me either." 

Moriarty didn't respond.  He was afraid to lose any more of his dignity—in front of the lady who had given him such a gift.  So he cleared his throat and finished huskily, looking up, "I'm just deeply moved."   _  No one's ever been this good to me—_the most revealing explanation echoed unspoken in his head.  _He _knew it, at least. _He_ realized what she had awoken in him.  _No one, indeed, Todd.  Until now._

But then an afterthought steeled him—ah, yes, she was only doing this to win his favor and escape.  To seduce him and dilute his caution.  "I'm sorry," he added, with a touch of gained resentment, slamming the dinner table, making all the glistening silverware clink against the snowy lace tablecloth.  "But a deal is a deal, madam—A game is a game, and I can't change its design.  You're _still _my hostage!" He fixed her with a challenging glare, a look that silently screamed, _Gotcha_! 

But had that hostage indeed taken advantage of his weakness in order to coerce, to trick, to further shame?  

 No.  "I do understand.  Business is business, after all," she had replied, calmly, without adornment.  Expecting his suspicion, and yet possessing no resentment of her own.  Her smile had broadened—something softened in her sea green eyes when she looked at him.  And then something in _him_, imperceptibly, in that same place that had been bared by her kindness, had fluttered—something had _changed_.  Like the feathers fallen from a flock of pigeons in ascent towards the sky.  That kind of "left over" feeling, the residue of . . . of _exhilaration_ . . . or . . _. something_.  What _was _it? All he remembered clearly was his own face growing very hot, and his palms very sweaty, until she looked away.  

And then she had excused herself and allowed him—and his two bewildered employees—to feast.  

Oh, yes, Marie Hudson had to be thanked tonight.  Etiquette be damned.  She was _not_ just a hostage.  Not any more.  

Moriarty strode to the kitchen doorway.  But he balked at the sight of his captive bustling to and fro, putting dishes away, wiping counter tops with the edge of her apron.  He stood there gawking at her, jaw ajar, perfectly pleased to be the silent spectator for a gap of several minutes.  What was _wrong_ with him, anyhow?  This wasn't merely the jumbling and slurring of perceptions that a drink induced.  It was far more compelling.  Suddenly her every idiosyncratic feature was entrancing.  Her hands, her back and neck and legs, why, they moved, when she washed or gestured, or opened a silver serving plate, like one of those swans among geese in the Thames—among all the loud, gawky, bumbling idiocy of the world flapping all about her, in her own peaceful way, naturally, standing out undeniably more graceful.  Her face was straight off a Botticelli painting, fresh and delightfully alert and amused at the simplest of pleasures.  God.  Her patience had _no_ end—her sweet directives towards his foolish lackeys were enough to convince him of that.  Five minutes with her revealed her extensive wit and wisdom about all manners of philosophy, literature and the arts, and yet this brilliant woman had not even tried to escape, to poison or seduce him, to do anything one might expect a cunning female to do.  It was as if his company were enough to sustain her, and she implicitly trusted whatever morsel of honor was left in him to deliver her safely back to Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson when the time was right. 

She believed in the incredible, the unthinkable—she believed in _his_ _virtue_.  

And he would defend that belief to the death.  He would preserve her like a diamond, and confound Holmes's certain expectations that, as he sat stewing in his Baker Street flat, his gracious young landlady was being beaten, tortured, or otherwise raped to death.  

But even more compelling than subverting Holmes's deductions, Moriarty would preserve Mrs. Hudson simply for the sake of thanking her.   

And right now, he could muster no nerve whatsoever to express that gratitude.  

So, feeling rather cowardly, he slipped from the kitchen threshold and down the hall to his bedroom.  He flung off his clothes, donned his night robe and cap, and sat confounded and wide awake on his bed until the cuckoo clock rang 2 am.  

His chamber was miraculously reformed; every book, tool and device in the place was arranged as it had been before the angel had arrived in his hellhole, and yet she had rendered it all clean as a newborn child.  The Professor could not stop wondering at it all, staring and grinning like a giddy town drunk.  Finally his attention fell on a vase of vibrant yellow-red daisies that she had rested on his bed table.  He seized one passionate bloom in his fingers and began to rip petals from its stem.  "Win, lose, win lose," he chanted softly, eyes feverishly glazed over.  

Her face.

"Win, lose . . ."

Oh, and those soft hands . . . 

"Win lose . . ." 

That honeyed hair, by God's blood, and that tender, fresh voice . . . and yet those eyes that seemed so wise for her 24 years, eyes that knew everything . . . that brave soul, and that _fine mind_ . . . 

"Win, lose . . ."

Oh, to have them all for his _own_.  To have an angel watching and waiting for his return each night.  To have someone to tell him, without falsehood and without change, _What you have done in your life matters to me_. Someone to say, _YOU matter to me._

"Oh . . ." Moriarty moaned aloud, in pure yearning earnest, his eyes growing tender in the privacy of his room, "Oh, how _nice_ it would be. . ." And only _one _other man stood in his way.  And if Moriarty smoked a pipe, too, and drugged himself to stimulate his brain, and wore a deerstalker, and pried into the private lives of others to make money, would he be able to beat Sherlock Holmes to the love of Marie Hudson?  "Win, lose . . ." 

The last petal shuddered unaided from the destroyed daisy. "Win . . ." 

Oh, Lord God, yes.  How nice to have _her_.  One room away.  In his abode.  So close and yet so unobtainable—only _one_ thing between them.  Only _one _man.  

_How nice to win._

_Could he?_

The tension in his limbs and chest and brain exploded.  "_Damn!_" he roared, a savage scream muted into his pillow, thrusting himself backwards into his sheets.  _Shit, shit, shit!  What in hell was happening to him?  Why was he flinging these childish temper tantrums, turning red as a beet and bumbling oafishly over words and thoughts?  _

_What madness was this, over a woman?_

_And yet . . . "_Oh,I want to _win _this time. . ." he admitted to the darkness, to the solitude of his chamber, through clenched teeth. _If I win, then . . ._

A desperate vision flashed before Professor Moriarty's mind: _a garden of quivering red-yellow daisies, Marie Hudson at the door of 221 B. Baker Street some quiet Sunday afternoon—bidding farewell to the three male tenants: himself, Todd, and Smiley.  Wearing a little cream bonnet, watering her blooms with one hand while reading a hodgepodge of his old doctoral dissertations on the Binomial Theorem, beaming her approval, maybe even dog-earing her favorite pages.  A volume of Shakespeare and Tolstoy would also be in her hand, but shoved behind his writings, which she would find so much more fascinating.  Marie would leaf through those pages and digest that knowledge with that under-appreciated feminine wit of hers, yes, and on that left hand, on that second to last little finger, would be the finest diamond ring in all London.   Moriarty himself would exit the boarding house last, letting his young cohorts stroll down the cobblestone ahead of him, allowing him a moment alone with her.  He would have a pipe in his mouth—a pipe the former tenant had smoked. Yes, he would—after all, perhaps she really liked men who smoked pipe tobacco.  Oh, and yes, a ring would be on his hand, too, a thick silver band to match hers, as he loaded his pistol and watched his wife water her flowers. "Another grand scheme?" she would coo, casting him an adoring smile.  Watering her daisies.  Nurturing, feeding.  "Nothing that vital," he would quip back, and then pinch her little nose teasingly—yes, and she would giggle and spray some water on him to make him let go of her, and scrunch up her face in an attempt to look indignant.  He would laugh at her—fondly, yes, and out loud, for there would be no fear of drawing too much public attention, of being chased or killed, by Scotland Yard or anyone else, in this perfect world.  "Planning a heist at the National Bank, my sweet," he would finally supply.  "That's all. I'll tell you all about it when we get back."  She would produce a handkerchief and wave it at him, giggling again, half-mocking and half-buoying him.  "Bravo, my dear!  Excellent! But in all seriousness, you do a good job, now, and be sure not to be late for supper!"  He would wink at her, leave her then, and catch up with Todd and Smiley, and the three men would stroll openly down the sun-soaked street towards their destination, no longer under cover of midnight.  _

_ And Holmes and Watson?  Buried somewhere, or better still, living and obsolete, unneeded, WORTHLESS.  Has-beens.  Yes, this time, YOU lose, Holmes. . . _

Professor Moriarty came back to reality as a man drowning grapples for fresh air.  He jolted upright, gnawing the edges of the pillowcase. 

He squared his shoulders, flung the downy mass across the bedroom, and pledged it to the rafters: "I'll _beat _Holmes this time! _I'll beat him_!"

            "Oh . . .oh no!"  A gasping cry, muffled by distance, jolted him, and at once he was silent.

It came from the kitchen—a woman's voice.

_Mrs. Hudson._

Moriarty was out of bed and down the hallway in ten seconds.  His slipper-clad feet skidded to a halt in the last place where he had seen the object of his reverie.  

He got to the kitchen in time to see his hostage flinging herself to the floor, dress and all, her face twisted with distress.  "Oh, Lord, no, my _brooch_ . . . where could it _be_?"  Her voice broke as his had broken only hours ago.

            No.  That was intolerable.  

            Moriarty did not bother to greet his captive; at once, before he himself knew what he was doing, he was on the floor, beside her. . . as if it were instinctual.  "Alright, what does it look like?"  His eyes snapped to her neck.  "Ah, as I suspected—the pink one.  Don't worry, we shall split up and scour every _inch_ of this floor!"  He began crawling around on all fours in his night robe, lifting his monocle off his nose and using it like a makeshift magnifying glass.  

Very much as Sherlock Holmes might do; but it is often said that enemies hate to notice their common denominators.  

He continued unabashed, "Success is _imminent_, Mrs. Hudson, never fear!"

            His gusto startled her. "Oh, my _goodness!_  Professor, I thought you had gone to sleep _long_ ago!"

Moriarty, scouring under an ironing board that had been propped up by the stove, paused. "You really didn't think I'd go to bed without _thanking_ you, did you?" he breathed—and at last, for the first time since his dinner, there on the floor, their eyes locked.  

A twinge of alarm crossed her face.  But then she hid it, regaining her steely brave resolve.  "What exactly do you . . . intend to do to me, sir?"

Realizing the many potential improprieties gushing into her mind, Moriarty felt remarkably stupid, and this unfortunately manifested itself in a physical way:  He jerked upright like an electrocuted tomcat; his skull smacked against the ironing board—_hard_.  "Oh, _ouch_!"  Trying to ignore the pain, and to endure the embarrassment, he waved his hands over his head and let out a short laugh.  "No, no, no, it's quite alright!  You mistake my meaning!  I swear I shan't _touch_ you!" 

"Oh.  I see."  Something almost akin to disappointment entered her voice now.  She cast her eyes downward, and busied herself in a notably more fervent search for her brooch.  Turning her back to him entirely, Mrs. Hudson then began peering under the newspaper clippings he'd underlined in red pencil, germs for his many crime ideas, now fallen on the floor in her path.  She shuffled through them, stacked them, and set them aside.  He thought he heard sniffing, and her shoulders shook rhythmically.  Crying, or laughter?  

Moriarty was flabbergasted.  Again the red flush blazed on his cheeks, his nightshirt collar felt tight, and he wondered whether he had chosen a prudent course of action. It had been many years since he had dealt with a woman.  It was not that he found them undesirable.  Far from it.  He had simply . . . never felt he had time for them, and had grown rather rusty in intercommunication with a specimen of their sex. So the Professor fumbled ahead through the darkness between himself and his hostage.  He hoped meekness would make up for boorishness. "Not that I wouldn't w_-want_ to . . well, I, er,  mean . . .um, oh . . . "  

_Oh, Jesus God, I'm floundering_. . . 

" Ah, you know, you're a very, _very_ . . . I . . . I  just . . . wanted you to realize the extent of your kindness, madam.  Yes.  _That's _it.  I wanted to tell you that you are extraordinary."

_Oh, Lord. So much for subtlety.  _

But this seemed to tug at her attention.  She abandoned her search for a moment to pivot around his way.  He was relieved, because the ungentlemanly temptation to stare at her lovely hindquarters was becoming all but unbearable.  But then he realized it was even harder to concentrate on her beautiful little face. On her great green eyes, which at once accepted _and _challenged him.  He swallowed, and forced himself to continue. "God knows how you _ought_ to be feeling right now, towards a man that threatened to kill you if you didn't cooperate with his wishes, who is now, only a few hours later, groveling and trying to return a favor too great to _ever_ repay.  But _you _have reserved judgment of me, and been generous to me without condition and without hope of personal profit, and . . . and to me, you see, that is almost _unfathomable_, because everything I do, I do for my _own _gain . . .and . . . ah, um . . . "  

_Shut up, you're rambling at her_.

"What could you have gained by helping me find my brooch just now?"  she cut in, with a piercing look that riveted him in place.

After a brief stretch of silence, he let out a rueful chuckle and averted his eyes.  "_Now_ you _are_ flattering me, madam."  He bent over again, continuing his search.  "Don't imply that I am being selfless.  I _know _and I_ accept _the monster that I am.  You need not pretend I do not disgust you.  I have stolen.  I have lied.  I have injured.  I have forged, pillaged, counterfeited, and aided others in far worse crimes for a pretty penny.  And I have murdered.  Fifteen years ago, I killed a beautiful young . . . a dear friend's lover.  He and I have been mortal enemies ever since.  And her name was . . . well, that's not important to you . . ."

"Elizabeth," the landlady interrupted.  "Elizabeth Hardy was her name, was it not?"

He froze mid-crouch.  " . . . Yes.  That was her name."  His gaze flashed back over her, communicating, probing for the true extent of her knowledge.  But he didn't ask.

"It is a shame, Professor, that you gave up on yourself so quickly.  Because I see . . . I see more, right now.  Right this moment."

" . . . That's very, ah . . ." He cleared his throat; there was a strange little knot obstructing his windpipe, all of a sudden . . . "Very kind of you."  He recoiled, making his way to the opposite side of the room.  Her words had an uncomfortably good aim at his insides.  So he turned the interrogation on its head.  "Tell me, lady, what is so important about this brooch of yours?  Seeing as we're prodding into each other's pasts."

She sighed, the worry creases in her milky peach forehead deepening.  "My husband gave it to me.  It was his first gift, when we began courting.  I was 19 years old. I have worn it every day since then."  

Moriarty froze.  " . . .You mean your . . . your _late _. . .?"

"Yes."

"How long has it been since . . ."

"Four years.  So . . . it still hurts sometimes, I suppose." 

" . . .  I see."  Inside he collapsed.  Damned he'd be if he didn't find it—he _had_ to do this for her—

"Oh dear!"  Too late.  A sob, and then tears, had already accosted Mrs. Hudson when Moriarty whirled around and joined her where a wedge opened between the bottom of the stove and the floor.  "It must have . . . it must have fallen and I must have . . ."  There, shattered into a hundred little rose-colored pieces, some scattered and some still inside the ovular pewter cameo—there was the brooch.  " . . . Oh Lord, I must have _stepped_ on it!" This simple, shattered memento of her husband, more than any danger she had faced all day, was too much for Moriarty's captive.  She curled into a ball, back against the stove, head in hands, and wept.  "No, no, no . . ."

Moriarty pressed himself against the ground and scooped up the divers shards of pink glass.  He stared at them, dissecting and calculating them.  He took in the sight of his sweet pardoner, the person who saw through him and still cared—now sobbing.  And then he knew what he must do.  "I can fix this. I _will_ fix this for you.  I have some coin forging tools that should work excellently.  It will take some time. . . but give me the night, and it will be ready for you by daylight."

She fell silent; her face stayed hidden in her arms.  A muffled voice ventured, "You would . . . really do that for me?"

            _Oh, God, milady.  That and so much more, if I only could.  _"Absolutely," he pledged aloud.  

            Still Mrs. Hudson hid her eyes, but her tear-wettened fingers slipped down his arm, reached his jewel shard grasping hand, and squeezed it.  He thought he might faint.  "Thank you, Professor," she whispered.  

            Seven hours passed in Professor Moriarty's study, lit only by a dim candle.  He picked together the miniscule pieces of Mrs. Hudson's brooch with various delicate etching tools that he had acquired after his recent coin forgery scheme.  

Foiled, of course, by the delightful Mr. Holmes.

Mrs. Hudson had joined the Professor in his dim, book-stuffed chamber after an hour of insomnia in the bedroom he'd given her.  She dozed off barefoot in his armchair, behind his formula-littered blackboard, amidst a pile of atlases, and next to a rotating globe.  It was around 4 am, and, somehow, she slept more soundly than she had in years. 

Dawn began its ascent when he fitted the last two pieces with his pliers, and glued them in place.  Ah, yes, it was _seamless_. Yes, _yes_!  _He had done well by her_.

            "Oh, poor Professor!"  His captive's voice, from his chair, made him jolt, and nearly undo his handiwork.  But despite the shock to the table, the brooch remained intact. "It was such a treat watching you so intent on your work last night," Mrs. Hudson half-scolded through a yawn, "but I feared you might be of the same temperament as my tenant Mr. Holmes, and go _too_ far for my sake.  Heavens, good sir, all _night_!  I see I was correct!  You must be _exhausted_."  She stretched luxuriously in the chair, yawned and fiddled with her unkempt coif before finally letting it all tumble down impulsively on her shoulders.  

Moriarty chuckled and lifted the repaired brooch from his worktable.  He delivered it carefully to her hands.  His posture drooped with the weight of sleeplessness.  "Aye, maybe I am," he sighed, and shrugged, " but it's good as new, madam.  Consider it my thanks."

She smiled sleepily, and touched the surface of her beloved trinket; she was wise enough not to turn it over or handle it roughly, but to treat it like one would a fragile thing, with tenderness and respect.  

Just like him. 

For a moment he enjoyed the rare pleasure of simple self-satisfaction, of peace, looking at her enraptured face framed in the white lace and jade satin of her nightrobe.  Then she beamed at him.  "It's perfect!" she cried.  "Oh, my dear sir!  You are a _miracle worker_!"

"How ironic," he exhaled, heart throbbing with a sudden opportunity.  He reached out and unclipped it, and began to fasten it to her robe collar with his own hands.  _Oh, yes, such soft creamy fur around that slender neck_.  _So pure. _  "I . . . I was about to say the same thing about _you_."  

 "Me?"

"Yes.  You're a lot like this brooch, you know.  Things break you, you put yourself back together, you never lose faith, and you don't trouble anyone with it.  Instead, the way you act, the way you are, you . . . you stay . . . so _very_ beautiful."  He gulped.  His hands had finished fastening her brooch minutes ago, but could not quite tear themselves from her.  They slid down to her shoulders and stroked them, once.   He waited.

Mrs. Hudson's breathing had grown husky, as though she were frightened.  But her eyes were dancing.  "Professor . . .M-Mori . . . "

"It's James."  He licked his lips.  "Just call me James."  

"James . . . do you think that . . . ?" She leaned towards him.  The room was stiflingly silent, close, intimate. He could smell ginseng soap and tea roses on her. Tea roses and summer.  _Oh, Mary, Mother of God . . . _

So he took her face in his hands.  Now he could hardly think over his thundering heart.  "Do I . . . Yes?"

"Would it be madness to believe . . . Well, I . . . Professor, do you think that you and I . . ."

 "I don't know, Mrs. Hudson."

"Marie."

"I . . ."  _Oh God_, _if You still listen to this filthy criminal's prayers, then_. . . "I don't know . . . Marie."  _Then help me now.  _

She curled her fingers around his wrists.  "But perhaps we could . . . _try_ to. . ."

" . . . Oh, God, _yes_."   _Yes.  _

She lifted her head, craned her neck suddenly, and smiled, barely an inch from his face.  Her stare welcomed, beguiled all but told nothing.  

This was a dreadfully unexpected error in the Great Moriarty's plot against Holmes.  He moaned; it turned into a plaintive whine, for he realized that he didn't care. He realized his goal had suddenly shifted. So he pulled her face still closer. 

And then they kissed.

A moment passed.  Mrs. Hudson giggled; her breath tickled Moriarty's lips, and her laughter became contagious to him.  They pulled apart.  "What just happened?"  he chuckled.

"I'm . . . not sure," she replied.  "But I liked it."

" . . . Me too."  He dared to take her tiny waist in his arms.  He swallowed hard, pressing still closer to her.  " . . .Marie . . . ?"

Holmes's landlady went rigid.  "James . . . I think I'd better go fix breakfast now."  Her face was torn between an urge to stay and a resolve to leave; but she seemed succumb to the latter instinct.  

He respected her, removing his grip at once.  "No, please—go on back to bed.  My treat.  You've much ahead of you this afternoon.  And we'll have plenty of time to finish this . . . discussion, won't we?"

She smiled mysteriously, charmingly, rising to leave his room.  "Most assuredly, good sir."

But the next day, Moriarty lost.  He lost again, as always.  Mrs. Hudson was restored to 221 B Baker Street. Holmes's reputation skyrocketed rather than plummeted. And on the brink of the lovely hostage's rescue, Moriarty himself, knowing his innate substance to be wholly unworthy of her, rejected her willing proposition that they meet again soon.   He turned her down—the only creature he'd ever dared to feel for— in fear, self-loathing, and numbness.  And so he lost her.  Clinging to that emotional anesthetic that had kept him alive against so many trials, Moriarty moved on, forcing the memory of hope lost, of Marie Hudson, beneath the surface of his conscious.  He continued, at an even more frenzied pace, to commit egregious crimes against England.  

No one knew what they felt for each other, in that one night in his study, with a mended pink brooch.

But there were few losses that wounded him so deeply as Marie Hudson: Just as there were few losses that anguished Sherlock Holmes so much as Elizabeth Hardy, and the self-imposed exile—the coldness of heart—that followed.  

~*~

MORE COMING SOON! J THANKS FOR READING! 


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